


Oh, the Places You'll Go!

by toomuchplor



Series: Schmoop Bomb: The Series [8]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:36:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have brains in your head.<br/>You have feet in your shoes<br/>You can steer yourself<br/>any direction you choose.</p><p>~ Dr. Seuss</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh, the Places You'll Go!

**Author's Note:**

> Last coda I completed before posting my IBB. We'll see if any more appear, down the line. :D

They see her off to school in her small red gingham uniform, hair neatly cinched into pigtails by Joy's unflinching expert hand.  Margaret's got a navy blue backpack because all the other kindergarteners have navy blue backpacks and Arthur has a thing about not making her any more different than she already needs to be. She’s already got to be the Kikuyu girl with two white fathers, after all.  

Arthur also has a thing about avoiding public displays of affection but he's the one whose hand creeps over and brushes pinkies with Eames as they watch her skipping and running into the school surrounded by all her friends from the Transition class last year.  She's not the littlest one, anymore; she's just another little body in a mob of little bodies every colour under the sun.

"Finally five," Eames says as the doors swing closed and the cluster of nervous parents at the gate starts to break up.  "Just when she's become recognizably human and rational, we're expected to ship her off for the better part of every day."

"She loves school," Arthur reminds him, and swipes the back of his hand over his forehead, already sweating in the early morning heat.  He'll never get used to the Kenyan climate, it seems.

"Hmm," Eames answers, unimpressed, and turns away from the school, shoulders slumped.  They walk to the car bumping elbows and don't have much to say on the drive home.

***

"Huh," says Arthur, three or four days later.  It's morning; he's barely awake.  He's just clued into the fact that he's putting some serious effort into tugging a newborn sized white onesie over his foot, a onesie he's sure he'd pulled out of his underwear drawer.  "How did that get in there?" he asks, holding it up for Eames to see.

"Joy must have mixed it in with the laundry when she was sorting things for charity," Eames says, glancing over, threading his belt through his belt loops.  "Give it here, I'll tell her to add it to the bin."

Arthur smooths the little garment out over his knee and frowns at it.  It has an embroidered duck in the middle of the chest and white snaps at the crotch.  He can't recall a clear image of Margaret wearing it, but the sight of the yellow duck pings a sense memory of being slumped in a rocking chair with ten pounds of squirmy baby slung in the crook of his elbow, listening to the tick of the clock and having no idea what time it was.  "It's like a PTSD trigger object," Arthur says, folding it up hastily and passing it over to Eames.

"Mm," Eames agrees, dropping it onto the top of his bureau before leaning in to study his careful part in the mirror, comb in his hand.

Eames must have remembered to give it to Joy because it's gone the next time Arthur looks.

***

Arthur's computer is getting glitchy; time to buy a new one next time they go to London or Chicago for a visit. Every time he opens it, his desktop photo has changed from the nicely generic blue graphic wave to some random old snapshot from his iPhoto stream.  One of these days, Arthur thinks, he's going to open this thing at a business meeting and there will be one of Eames' many naked self-portraits instead of something more innocent like this blurry shot of Margaret wobbling happily in her baby seat, tiny fingers outstretched.

***

Swahili Sunday.  It used to be the day when Eames was the only one talking while Arthur sat and struggled to remember the word for 'placemat' but now it's two against one, Eames and Margaret conversing noisily and easily while Arthur cheats and looks up how to say 'fingers don't go in noses' when they're distracted with some art project.

"What the crap is my browser history right now?" Arthur blurts out unthinkingly, and then rolls his eyes and pulls out a handful of shilling notes, drops them in the jar marked _Hakuna Kiingereza_ before Eames can demand it.  "That's a downpayment for you, too, come over here and explain this. Slowly. In English.”

Eames leaves Margaret with her sheet of stickers and comes over to where Arthur's got his computer open on the kitchen counter.  "You know how it is," he says, "click one online poker ad by accident and you get seven pop-up — oh.  That."

"We'll talk about the poker later," Arthur says darkly.  "Right now I'm more interested in why you were looking at Baby Dior online sites."

"I didn't know Dior made little jeans, did you?" Eames asks brightly.  "They don't come in Margaret's size, though, more's the pity."

Arthur waits.

"Call it nostalgia," Eames says, giving in.  "She's getting so big."

" _Kipenzi_ ," Arthur says quietly, smiling, dashing a kiss over Eames' ear.   _Darling_ — the one Swahili word he'd learned early, and well.

" _Ninakupenda_ ," Eames replies, sliding an arm around Arthur's waist.  "Oh, look at your desktop background. I forgot about that pink fluffy skirt, she looks like a candy floss baby."

Arthur laughs, nodding, and decides to leave the photo for now.

***

The attic is Eames' domain, undisputed. Arthur rarely goes up there, if only to avoid stupid fights later about the cigarette butts on the window ledge and the decks of forged casino cards that Eames is (probably) never going to use anyway.  But today Eames is off in Nairobi having a meeting with someone about something that might end up annoying Arthur far more than illicit smoking out a window and old gambling habits that refuse to die. Arthur is sure he put up a box of winter coats last year, they've got a flight booked to Illinois in three weeks, and it's January, so —

Arthur tells Joy where he's headed, just in case one of Eames' stacks of pornography topples and crushes him to death, and then puts on his oldest crappiest clothes (including one of Eames' t-shirts) and pulls down the ladder that leads up to Eames' attic.

It's neater than last time he'd braved the journey upwards, actually; several of the boxes have been moved closer to the sloping walls, and Eames' so-called desk is mostly clear barring the usual Eamesian detritus of gnawed pencils and broken erasers, twisted up elastic bands and scuffed poker chips.  Arthur recognizes a few things, pens that have gone missing, the school field trip permission slip that they turned the house upside down looking for three days ago, the wrapper and stick from the last Magnum ice cream bar that Eames swore (on his mother's life — Arthur should have known he was lying) he didn't eat.

Arthur turns to a stack of boxes, searching for his own handwriting; he knows he labelled the winter coats, remembers doing it.  But the top box is also labelled, and it's been pulled open.  Recently.

"Baby Clothes", it reads in Arthur's block capitals. "Keepsakes."

Arthur narrows his gaze as he lifts the box flaps and looks inside, and sure enough, the yellow embroidered duckie is the first thing he sees.  Arthur lifts it up and finds the candy floss tutu, and under that a stack of several of Margaret's nicest dresses from infancy.  He rests his palm over them, presses down a little to feel the springy give of all the combined layers of tulle, and scowls.

***

Eames comes back from Nairobi in the dead of night — stupid, means he was driving in the darkness on the terrible Kenyan highways — and crawls between the covers smelling faintly of cigar smoke.  It's clear he doesn't expect Arthur to be awake, because Arthur sleeps like the dead. Still, it only takes a moment before Eames’ weight shifts, his throat catches; he's noticed Arthur's breathing, knows Arthur isn't sleeping.

"Oh," says Eames, and slides a hand towards Arthur, "did you miss me?"

Arthur swats Eames' hand away.  "I don't even know where to start," he says, "but missing you isn't at the top of the list."

Eames freezes, and then sighs.  "You went up to the attic."

Arthur reaches over and flicks on the bedside lamp, leans up on his elbows and glares.  "Would you care to go first?” he asks.

Eames sits up against the headboard, avoiding eye contact.  "I knew if I just came out and said it, you'd tell me no. I was just — softening you up."

"You were manipulating me," Arthur corrects him.  "Poorly."

"Not so poorly," Eames says, taking offence.  "Go on, tell me you didn't hold those little clothes up to your face and sniff them."

"I didn't," Arthur replies easily.  "Jesus christ, why would I?"

"Because they still smell of baby!" Eames answers wildly.  "They smell of — of lotion and formula and baby shampoo and —"

—"feces and spit-up and painful bone-deep exhaustion," Arthur adds.  "They smell like almost losing my mind from being so tired, and like us fighting every waking moment about every little detail of our child's bodily functions.  Eames, we went _weeks_ talking about nothing but _poop_.  How could you forget?"

"Her little fingernails!" Eames exclaims piteously.  "Arthur, remember how soft the skin was on the palms of her hands?  The little wrinkles at her wrists?  Oh, and the laugh, the way she'd laugh."

Arthur looks at Eames, baffled.  "Finally five," he says, as emphatically as he can.  " _Finally five_."

Eames rubs his eye and shakes his head.  "I want another."

“Holy shit,” Arthur says, and flops down, pulls a pillow over his face.  "I married a crazy person," he tells the pillow.

Eames is rolling in closer, not trying to halt Arthur's attempts at self-asphyxiation, but not shy about flinging his thigh over Arthur's hips either, about gathering Arthur in and squeezing the holy hell out of him.  "Can you honestly say you don't miss having a baby in the house?" Eames asks, shoving his face in where Arthur can hear him.

Arthur pulls the pillow off his face, wanting to be clear as possible.  "I do not miss having a baby in the house," he says, very distinctly and slowly.

"Yes, you do," Eames says, completely off his gourd.

"What are you, ovulating?" Arthur asks, and pushes the pillow over Eames' head instead.  "Agh, I hate you."

Eames starts giggling as he struggles against Arthur, and Arthur has to kiss him to stop the giggling, and five minutes later Eames is fucking Arthur face to face, sideways across the mattress, and Arthur's digging his heels into Eames' back and cursing the part of his brain that is so horrifyingly vulnerable to being stupidly in love with this idiot.

"Think it took?" Eames asks afterwards, and rubs Arthur's belly.

"Oh my god," Arthur says. "You would poke holes in condoms if I were a woman, wouldn't you?  You're that insane."

"I miss having someone fart when I pat them on the bottom," Eames says.

"Lucky for me, I can have that whenever I want," Arthur says.

***

It's not the end of it, nothing close.  Eames only steps up his campaign of terror now that his cover is blown.  Pictures on the computer desktop turn into photographic prints left everywhere Arthur turns.  Onesies in the underwear drawer become tiny balled up socks stuffed into the toes of all Arthur's shoes.  Suspicious browser histories become multiplying browser tabs displaying little sweater vests and ties, gorgeous baby linens, articles on how children display improved social skills if they have a sibling, heartbreaking no-fair links to local adoption agencies with too many tiny orphans.

"They wouldn't let us adopt from them anyway," Arthur makes the mistake of pointing out once, fed up with photos of sad brown eyes that remind him uncomfortably of Margaret's.  "They don't give babies to gay foreigners."

"I found one that would arrange another private adoption," Eames says eagerly, because of course he has a ready answer.  "They were persuaded by our having been married so long, and having Margaret already."

"You've been talking to agencies?" Arthur asks, appalled.

"Purely for research purposes," Eames says.

They go to Chicago and visit Arthur's dad and brother, who make all the usual insinuations about Eames and Arthur adding to the family; it never bothered Arthur before, but he blushes more than once, often enough that Ian says, "Whoa, is there actually something in the works?" and Eames grins while he denies it emphatically.

"You can't incept me into wanting a baby," Arthur says when they get into bed, their last night in the States.

"Don't be ridiculous, I don't even have access to a PASIV anymore," Eames tuts.  "Besides, I'd need a whole team, and Ariadne is tied up with something in Sweden for at least three more months.  Can't incept without a good architect."

"You're hilarious," Arthur tells him.

He checks for puncture marks on the inside of his forearm the next morning while Eames is in the shower, which probably means their marriage is doomed to failure.

It's just that he'd had a weird dream, and in it they'd had a little boy.

***

Back in Mombasa, Margaret has suddenly learned how to read, and their lives rhyme. All the time.  While Arthur drinks wine.

"Hop on Pop," Margaret says, and does, while Eames oofs and laughs and tries to wrestle her down.  Arthur looks over from his laptop (seventeen browser tabs he'd had to close this time, including one with a really stunning stroller that — never mind, close, close) and smiles at the pair of them.

"Assalala, your poor Baba," Eames grunts, "I'm far too old for this."  He rears up anyway, holding Margaret by the heels while she shrieks, swinging her around the living room as she giggles madly.

Arthur watches, and grins into his wineglass, and wonders why this isn't enough for Eames.  If this is going to be a real problem, one they can't solve by teasing each other and fucking it out later.

***

Eames loses steam.  

(Arthur's even thinking in rhymes.)  

The photos Arthur tucks away stop resurfacing, the little socks don't pop back out the box in the attic, Arthur's Chrome window stops being a baby propaganda machine.  Eames doesn't mention it for three days, for a week, for a month.

***

They're getting Margaret out of the bath.  She's been pokey and emotional all evening, and while Arthur is still wrapping her up in a towel and scrubbing her dry, she says, "My tummy feels bad," and then, with barely a pause for breath, turns her head and barfs all over Eames, the floor, the bathmat, Arthur's feet, herself.  Arthur will never ever want to eat hamburgers again.

There follows a night of grinding dreary horror the likes of which Arthur hasn't survived since the bleak days on the run with Cobb, early on in his then-secret marriage.  

They take it in turns to wash two sets of sheets, three pairs of pajamas, four pairs of pants, three t-shirts, and what seems like every throw rug in the world.  Margaret can't warn them; she rears up out of a clammy sleep and just heaves.  It's awful.  Even worse, she clings determinedly to them, her little hot miserable body draped in Eames' lap, or Arthur's, like the only hope she has of feeling even a little better is intrinsically linked to them, embedded in their bodies, encoded in their fatherhood.  Arthur kisses her sweaty forehead and strokes her hair and hates that he can't magically make her better the way she thinks he can.

"I have never been so fond of someone who threw up in my mouth," Eames says, bringing in the latest load from the dryer, pulling out clothes and folding them haphazardly.

"She didn't get your mouth," Arthur says.

"She almost got my mouth," Eames says.  "And 'almost' counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and projectile vomiting."

Arthur smirks tiredly and resettles Margaret against his chest.  He might be imagining it, but she seems cooler to the touch now, her rest seems more absolute.  The storm might be passing at last.

Eames puts down the t-shirt in his hands and breathes out slowly through his nose, looking troubled.

"No," Arthur says.  "No, Eames."

"Fucking hell," Eames says, and runs for the bathroom.

***

The way it works out is that Margaret feels wonderful and chirpy and energetic in the morning, while Eames is just staggering back to his feet with a gurgling stomach and Arthur is replacing him kneeling in front of the toilet.  They send Joy home before she can come through the front door into the House of Gastric Distress, and Eames and Arthur spend most of the day lying on the couch and watching Margaret break almost every rule because they're too exhausted to get up and intervene.

"If she gets a knife, we'll stop her," Eames says determinedly.  

Arthur wraps an arm across his stomach and prays for it to stop roiling.  "Or you could get her to stab me and put me out of my misery."

By the evening he's mostly back to normal, though, and they are all able to sit upright at the dinner table while Margaret eats a reheated hamburger from last night ( _how?_ ) and Arthur and Eames force themselves to spoon the bland insides of baked potatoes into their mouths.

"You were right," Eames says when they finally see Margaret off to sleep and can clamber into their cool soft bed.  "What a nightmare, I can't imagine having a baby mixed in with all that."

"Right?" Arthur says, pushing his body stomach-first against the mattress, sprawling out his limbs, blissful at the prospect of restorative sleep.

"She's perfect, anyhow," Eames muses sleepily.  "Another child could only be a disappointment, comparatively."

***

The next day Eames is up in the attic and Margaret is in school, so Arthur takes the opportunity to do a little de-cluttering.  It's impossible to throw things away otherwise, between Eames' packrat nature and Margaret's emotional attachment to toys that haven't seen the light of day since she was in diapers.  Arthur gets a cardboard box at the ready and goes through Margaret's dresser, pulling out everything that's too small or too worn.  Next up is the bulletin board over her little desk; Arthur pulls down most of the drawings, which are legion, and sets aside a precious few for safekeeping.

Last of all he braves the toy box, which is long overdue for a cleaning.  Mostly it's a jumble of things that Arthur can sort into piles, play food here, doll clothes there, puzzle pieces to be returned to boxes later, books that need shelving.  There are a few obvious candidates for charity donation, toys that have never been a hit with Margaret, like the little tool bench they'd gotten as a failed gesture towards feminism.  (She preferred space toys to tools, it turned out.)  The bottom of the toy chest is the worst of all, mostly tiny unrecognizable plastic things, pieces of cardboard, hair clips, and a few squashed plush toys that have been cruelly crushed under the weight of all the other playthings.  One beloved bear aside, Margaret hasn't ever been a fan of stuffed animals.

Arthur reaches into the toy chest and pulls out one of the toys, squishing it in his hand to try and restore its shape before he puts it into the charity box.  It's brown, fluffy, and it has a blue kerchief around its —

"Herbert," Arthur says, startled, and pulls one of the long ears upright, brushes the grain of the fluff away from a black glassy eye.  "The flamboyantly gay hare," he adds dazedly, squeezing the soft body in his fist.  He can't help it, he brings the toy up to his face and gives it a sniff, expecting it to smell of nothing more than cedar and the slight mustiness of things closed up for too long — but Herbert gives off a faint soft scent, a sort of faded perfume that's sweet and earthy at once.  Arthur closes his eyes.  His heart lurches.

He'd forgotten, that soft place behind Margaret's tiny baby ears where Arthur used to bury his nose and breathe in, and everything faded away — the exhaustion, the frustration, the endless pacing — leaving only that delicate little place, that secret spot where Arthur knew in his heart that nothing mattered except this little fragile being in his arms, who needed him so absolutely, who trusted him with her whole small body.

"Oh, fuck," Arthur says, lowering Herbert and stroking him between his flamboyantly gay floppy ears, straightening his flamboyantly gay kerchief.  "We're having another baby."

***

Two months later, they bring Felix home, and it's chaotic and endless and worse even than the first time around, because Felix is a colicky baby and 'colicky', it turns out, is Old English for 'constantly screaming until you go insane'.  

But somehow it's better this time, too, because of Margaret, because Arthur knows now — even at three o'clock in the morning when he hasn't slept for days — that in half a year's time Felix will be sitting up. Half a year after that, he'll be walking; and then will come the terrible twos, the frightful threes, the fucking fours, and the finally fives.  It will happen faster than the blink of an eye, Arthur knows. It will happen much faster than he likes, even right now when he's desperately wishing that Felix could calm the fuck down and trust that he won't actually die before Eames can get back with the warmed bottle.

Arthur sits in the rocking chair with Felix draped over his chest and shoulder, pats his heaving little back, and breathes in the soft baby smell.  Felix's bottom is heavy and warm against his palm, and as Eames staggers tiredly back into the bedroom, there's a noisy pop under Arthur's hand.

"Don't worry, I'm sure he saved one for you," Arthur says, and tips the baby down onto his lap, takes the bottle, tries to coax it into Felix's open screaming mouth.


End file.
